Visitors cash in

From European Voice's Entre-Nous column

11/16/11, 9:07 PM CET

Updated 4/23/14, 9:13 PM CET

The European Parliament = a cash business.

Quite the most humorous passage in the annual report the European Court of Auditors published last week comes in comments on the European Parliament’s subsidy scheme to pay the travel expenses of visitors to the Parliament.

The auditors express doubts about how the subsidy for group visits is calculated (the number of visitors, multiplied by the average return distance that the group has to travel, and the standard cost of an individual trip by private car).

The auditors observe that there is “a risk of overpayment as most groups use cheaper collective transport”. To which the Parliament responds that the leader of the group receiving the money must sign a statement that the amount received “is not higher than the actual cost of the journey minus any other contributions received”. So that’s all right then.

Then the auditors mildly suggest that: “The practice of allowing the compensation to be paid to the designated leader of the group in cash rather than by bank transfer limits the possibility of applying internal control procedures to these transactions.” No, really? The auditors found payments of €55,236 were made in cash in four cases audited (so an average of nearly €14,000 per group leader). According to the auditors, 78% of the total payments made to groups of visitors in 2010 were made in cash.

One wonders what innocent visitors are to make of an institution that hands out thousands of euros in brown envelopes without asking too many questions.

Fact File

The auditors also raise a collective eyebrow at the European Economic and Social Committee, which is a bastion of outdated practice on the payment of travel expenses for its members. They get to choose between reimbursement of actual costs based on receipts, or a flat-rate allowance.

The auditors observe: “Although legal and regular, this procedure does not correspond to the practice of the other European institutions and bodies”, which have moved towards repaying actual costs. The EESC responds that the relevant rules will be reformed. A proposal is to go to the EESC’s bureau next month, with the changes to take full effect from 2015.

Faithful readers may recall that Giacomo Regaldo, a former member of the EESC, fiddled his expenses by claiming reimbursement both from the EESC and from the Italian employers’ organisation that he represented. The case was passed to the Belgian public prosecutor in 2005, but it was not until 2008 that he was fined and given a suspended prison sentence. He appealed, and after a few postponements, a hearing was at last held in a Brussels court at the beginning of November and a ruling is scheduled for the second week of December. But up to now, Regaldo still has not paid his fine or paid back any fraudulently claimed expenses.